Page 13 of His Noble Heart
“Yes. Thank you for finding something so quickly,” Ma said.
“A good friend of mine and his wife own a few rental properties. This one became available two weeks ago, so the timing was perfect. I’ll let him know he can bring the lease over.”
“Appreciate you, Unc.”
I left my mother alone to talk to her brother, and I explored the rest of the house. My mother would take the primary bedroom with the bathroom, Ramina could have the one closest to the hall bathroom, and I’d take the one in the back of the house.
When I went back to the front of the house, my uncle was standing near the front door. He’d moved from Savannah to Onyx City about twenty years ago and opened up his shop. He was my mother’s only sibling, and they weren’t extremely close, but their relationship was solid.
“Some of my guys from the shop are headed over to help you unload. Let’s get what we can until they get here,” he suggested.
“Thanks, Unc. Mina, you and Ma can start unloading your car.”
We spent the next several hours unloading our furniture and our other belongings. The landlord came over and we signed a year-long lease. He only asked for the security deposit and first month’s rent, but I paid him for six months, much to my mother’s dismay. She claimed to hate how I made most of my money, but she didn’t have so much pride that she refused my help.
With the help of the guys who worked with my uncle, things moved quickly. I was grateful for their help and tried to pay them, but they refused, only taking beer and pizza as payment. Once they were gone, we still had a lot of work to do unpacking boxes and organizing.
My mother had two weeks before she started at the new hospital, and it was summer, so Ramina was out of school. My uncle said I could start next week, so we had plenty of time to settle into our new home and our new life.
When I finally showered and turned in for the night, I had several text messages and missed calls from Myra. I hadn’t told her I was leaving, but based on the number of times she’dreached out, she might’ve gotten wind of it. Instead of texting her, I called.
“You left town and didn’t say shit? I thought we were better than that,” she answered.
“It was kinda sudden. How did you find out?”
“There’s a video of you and Zelle fighting?—”
“Fighting?”
“I mean, well, you were beating his ass. A few videos from different angles are circulating on social media. People in the comments are speculating about why you went after him like that. Some mentioned that they heard you, your mom, and your sister left town.”
“You know I don’t do that social media shit. Does the video show him trying to pull Mina from the window of my car?”
“No, it started with you behind him with your arm around his neck.”
“You know that nigga is a pedophile. I was in the store for two minutes, and he tried to pull a fast one. He’s lucky I didn’t kill his ass.”
“Yeah, I hear a lot about him messing with young girls.”
“He tried that shit with my sister, but I wasn’t having it. I’ll go to jail behind her and my mama.”
“I also heard someone stole a large sum of money from him.”
“I heard that too.”
“And your name was mentioned as a potential person.”
“I heard the same, but it wasn’t me.”
“So, why the sudden move?” she pressed.
“It was time for a change.”
“Where’d you go?”
“That information is being shared on a need-to-know basis.”
“And you don’t think I need to know?”
